South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune on Sunday threatened to slap the Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC) with sanctions if it didn’t drop its utility for an arrest warrant in opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Thune – who was chosen Wednesday to be the following Senate Majority Chief as soon as the GOP takes the higher chamber come January 2025 – warned that if the present Democratic chief doesn’t tackle the worldwide court docket, he’ll.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their outrageous and unlawful actions to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” Thune wrote on X. “If Majority Leader Schumer does not act, the Senate Republican majority will stand with our key ally Israel and make this – and other supportive legislation – a top priority in the next Congress.”
Senator John Thune, R-S.D., heart, newly elected Senate majority chief for the upcoming 119th Congress, speaks to reporters on the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (TING SHEN/AFP through Getty Photographs)
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In Could, the ICC issued purposes for arrest warrants in opposition to Netanyahu, in addition to then-Israeli Protection Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas terrorists for alleged warfare crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity following the Oct. 7, 2023 assaults. All three Hamas leaders are believed to since have been killed.
Thune’s threats have been made in coordination with a invoice launched by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., in June – which intently aligned with a invoice that handed within the Home with bipartisan assist simply days prior – that referred to as for sanctions in opposition to prosecutors who’ve gone after “U.S., Israeli, or any other allied citizen wrongfully targeted by the ICC.”
The U.S. doesn’t formally acknowledge the ICC’s authority, however it’s not the primary time Washington has regarded to halt the court docket’s actions.
In 2020, the Trump administration opposed makes an attempt by the ICC to research U.S. troopers and the CIA concerned in alleged warfare crimes between 2003-2004 “in secret detention facilities in Afghanistan,” and issued sanctions in opposition to ICC prosecutors.
Nevertheless, the sanctions did greater than goal people by means of asset freezing and worldwide journey bans and have been deemed, on the time, to have the potential for “wide-reaching consequences.”
Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 79th session of the United Nations Basic Meeting on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. (AP Photograph/Pamela Smith)
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“Service providers to the ICC – from banks to vending machine companies – may reassess whether continuing to work with the institution is prudent given the risk of inadvertently violating U.S. sanctions,” Human Rights Watch defined.
“[It] created apprehension and uncertainty for nongovernmental organizations, consultants, and lawyers who work with the ICC in investigative and adjudicative capacities,” the group added.
Richard Goldberg, who served on the White Home Nationwide Safety Council in the course of the Trump administration and who’s now a senior adviser to the Basis for Protection of Democracies, informed Fox Information Digital the 2020 sanctions have been additionally “effective in shaking up the organization since it was coming up on an election for a new chief prosecutor.”
“Many believed that the presence of U.S. sanctions led Karim Khan to put investigations of Israel and the U.S. in a drawer once he was elected,” Goldberg defined in reference to the ICC’s chief prosecutor who filed the purposes for warrants of arrest in opposition to Netanyahu and Gallant.
Goldberg argued that sanctions in opposition to prosecutors might not be sufficient to dissuade Khan from pursuing the case in opposition to Netanyahu and warned the ICC chief may view them as “a badge of honor.”
Worldwide Legal Court docket Prosecutor Karim Khan poses throughout an interview with AFP on the Cour d’Honneur of the Palais Royal in Paris on Feb. 7, 2024. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP through Getty Photographs)
Goldberg stated he thinks lawmakers ought to think about going after the ICC as an entire fairly than particular person prosecutors this time round.
“It’s one thing to threaten sanctions against individuals involved in illegitimate schemes to indict American or Israeli soldiers, it’s another thing to use sanctions as a tool to cut off the ICC’s access to funds,” he informed Fox Information Digital.
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“I believe nations like Japan and Germany will put huge stress on the ICC to again down in the event that they suppose their very own banks could also be topic to sanctions for wiring cash to the ICC,” he added.
Choices by the court docket on arrest warrants are typically made inside three months, in line with Reuters, although it stays unclear when the panel will attain a call.
The final time the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC was requested to decide over issuing a warrant for the arrest of a authorities chief was when an utility was filed in opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2023. The panel reached a call inside one month of the appliance having been filed.
